The Nature of Truth
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| Author | Sergio Troncoso |
|---|---|
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Genre | Philosophical novel |
| Publisher | Arte Público Press |
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Publication date
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March 2014 |
| Media type | Print (Paperback) |
| Pages | 261 pp |
| ISBN | |
| OCLC | 51867902 |
| 813/.54 21 | |
| LC Class | PS3570.R5876 N38 2014 |
The Nature of Truth is a novel by Sergio Troncoso first published in 2003 by Northwestern University Press. It explores righteousness and evil, Yale and the Holocaust. Arte Público Press published a revised and updated paperback edition of Troncoso's novel in 2014.
Helmut Sanchez is a young researcher in the employ of renowned Yale professor Werner Hopfgartner. By chance, Helmut discovers a letter written decades ago by his boss mocking guilt over the Holocaust. Appalled, Helmut digs into the scholar's life and travels to Austria and Italy to uncover evidence of Hopfgartner's hateful past. Meanwhile, Hopfgartner's colleague and rival, Regina Neumann, wants to reveal the truth about Hopfgartner's sexual liaisons with vulnerable students before the professor's imminent retirement. Neumann traps Sarah Goodman, an insecure graduate student trying to find her place at Yale, into initiating formal charges of sexual harassment against Hopfgartner. Soon Helmut's intellectual quest for the truth metamorphoses into a journey of justice and blood, one with unforeseen consequences.
Troncoso's novel explores how a man of Mexican-German heritage navigates a complex moral universe, and how his experience reveals the differences and links between righteousness and evil in the quest for the truth. In an interview for Prime Number Journal in 2015, Troncoso said: "I had read Heidegger as a graduate student at Yale, and Being and Time was fascinating to me, particularly the concept of Being-towards-death....I was always shocked by the intellectual violence I witnessed at many Ivy League seminars, how people would just eviscerate each other with words, in pursuit of ‘The Truth,’ and how often they would lose themselves in these arguments. They would lose their humanity, in my opinion....I did not want to lose myself as a philosopher, and lose my heritage, and lose my humanity. I wanted to write a novel about someone wrestling with these issues of morality and identity, someone picking and choosing where he goes and who he is, a moral actor stumbling badly as he is consumed by the pursuit of ‘The Truth,’ and then finding himself with the help of friends."
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